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The mandate of Human Reproduction Update involves several roles:(i) to provide a synthesis of evidence that can aid scientists and clinicians in their daily work;(ii) to help reproductive specialists understand concepts from related disciplines; and (iii) to summarize current knowledge generated by basic science as the foundation of future scientific and clinical advancement. Given that review and synthesis are central to good scientific and clinical practice, and that a grasp of the current state of knowledge is a prerequisite to designing new studies, it is pertinent to ask which reviews are most likely to fulfil the needs of readers. A related question concerns whether systematic reviews meet the needs of all review topics and all readers.

Summarizing evidence or knowledge is a difficult problem in reproductive medicine, as in other branches of science and medical care (Eddy et al., 1992). For each question there may be …